


heart to heart

by historymiss



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Cannibalism, Gen, babs is a snacc, rituals! getcher rituals!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:27:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24806179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historymiss/pseuds/historymiss
Summary: yes this is a terrible pun, no i have no regrets.Baby Coronabeth's first cannibalism.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 27





	heart to heart

Coronabeth Tridentarius tastes her first heart when she is five years old. She is well used to the taste of blood by then - on Ida, all babies are given a pricked finger to suckle, the blood warm and salty and full of the promise of life. This, though, is different, for the thin slivers of her uncle’s heart are laid out like the veined petals of a flower, and Coronabeth can smell the metallic richness of the raw muscle. It’s hard to believe that this is part of the same man who bounced her on his lap during long state dinners, fed her from his own fork and let her infant hands clasp his fingers in pudgy posessiveness.

She wonders how her heart will be prepared, when it’s time.

Further down the table, the lesser nobles mourn and suck and chew on what remains of her father’s brother, fighting to be the one who devours the most of him, and thus expresses the deepest grief. 

Father and Mother have had his eyes, trickling jelly down their chins like fruit, and his tongue. This is the last of her uncle that is left, and the greatest honour.

“Body to blood.” The priests murmur, stepping back to wipe their hands on their ceremonial aprons. “May his life enrich your own.” Her father acknowledges them with a nod, tonguing a scrap of brotherly gristle from between his teeth.

He died young, and tender. Ianthe rolls up a delicate slice of her uncle’s heart and offers it to Coronabeth, her eyes solemn and far too big for her face.

“Together,” she says, because that’s _their_ word, the one they whisper to each other under the sheets of the bed they share. Coronabeth knows Ianthe’s body like her own, and she knows, suddenly, the way that sisters do, that when the time comes, their hearts will be served together, and people will eat them from the same plate and nobody will know the difference. 

Coronabeth takes the heart, and chews the muscle to lace between her teeth.

(Over a decade later, Coronabeth will kneel next to the body of their cavalier, and she will prise apart his ribs with the very last of her strength.

His heart will be cold in her hands, purple with congealing blood, and Coronabeth will shame herself with the thought that she never really knew enough about Babs to tell if his heart betrays anything of him.

It is too late, and it is the only honour she can give.)


End file.
